PUBLIC Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan has said that Government is moving to address inherited “design flaws” which have led to poor ventilation of the Brickdam lockups and the Police Forensic Laboratory.He said Government is disappointed with rehabilitation works done on the Forensic Lab, and is preparing to do additional rehabilitation works to allow the building to serve its purpose.

“We have to do a major piece of rehabilitation there, because you have to have an equivalent temperature all over that building for purposes of keeping samples and a whole set of things,” Ramjattan told reporters at an AFC-hosted press conference on Friday.

Acting Police Commissioner David Ramnarine had earlier expressed concern about the sordid state of the Brickdam lockups, a key detention facility whose condition, he said, is of grave concern to law enforcement officials. He had called for works on the facility to be expedited so that the facility can adequately serve the needs of ‘A’ Division.

“The burden of shifting serious crimes’ suspects to other lockups on a daily basis is one we have been bearing with tremendous patience over the years. I wish to take this opportunity to urge the officials concerned to spare no effort to realize this much-needed facility in the capital city of Georgetown,” Ramnarine had said.

He had cited the need for an increase in the number of holding cells, improvement in accommodation, and human rights’ considerations in the construction of the facility.

Ramjattan told reporters that the contractor who had worked on the lockups had said he has built according to the architectural design which he was given to work with.
Ramjattan called the lockups project “troublesome.” Sums of money have been allotted in the 2016 national budget towards extension and repair of the lockups, and the project was up for tender earlier this year.

“The Brickdam lockups have been troublesome for a number of years now. We got corrective measures to be done under this year’s budget, and after we got the allocation in the 2016 budget, we immediately put it up to tender, and three persons tendered. Then it went to the National Tender Board… Then it had to come back to the evaluation committee.”

Faults were found in the tendering processes and all three bidders were asked to re-tender.

“These are some of the impediments and difficulties and challenges we would have… Our Minister of Finance has indicated that the public sector investment program has had its problem. We did a lot of allocations in this 2016 budget, but somehow…the public tendering processes are causing huge problems, to the extent that it is delaying and stifling the process for spending the (sums of) money.”

He said Finance Minister Winston Jordan recently asked ministry officials to get a hands-on approach and ensure that sums of money are being spent correctly. A significant percentage of allocations on public infrastructure projects remains unspent.

The Brickdam lockup is one capital project which has been “hung up” for several years. The Minister said the construction must allow for more ventilation.

“In a prison system, you have to have a perfect design that will aerate if you’re not going to make it air conditioned; and there was some problem with that initially in the design. The contractor told us that with the money that he had to complete the (project), he did it exactly as done to specifications. But…we can’t put prisoners in there!” Ramjattan explained.